Empowering new cultural initiatives

HOW COMMUNITIES AND THE THIRD SECTOR CAN EMPOWER NEW CULTURAL INITIATIVES

CASE VILLA RANA AT THE HEART OF JYVÄSKYLÄ

by Mari Aholainen | mari.aholainen@jyvaskyla.fi

The birth of the Cultural Centre Villa Rana in the heart of the campus area of the University of Jyväskylä is a prime example of how the third sector and the independent field of arts have brought about a renewal of cultural processes in Jyväskylä, Finland.

The City of Jyväskylä, a number of cultural establishments, and other actors in the field of professional and amateur arts have deepened their cooperation via the Cultural Centre. The independent field of arts has organized itself as a force to reckon with alongside content production.

Cultural facilities bring people together and create new action models

Jyväskylä has been short of various cultural facilities for a long time, a problem that still has not been entirely solved. A few years ago, various communities and associations took the matters in their hands and joined forces to make a handsome but unoccupied old University building available for cultural use. The Villa Rana building was bought by a real estate investor who wanted it to be used in a way suitable for cultural history and leased it to the freshly-established Jyväskylän kulttuuritalon tukiyhdistys association.

The journey from the idea to opening doors was a long and strenuous one. Renovating the historical building, creating an action concept, planning and obtaining funds, and the COVID-19 that put everything back to square one made for a period that nobody wants to relive.

Cultural facilities generate interaction and make for visibility

cultural heritage of Jyväskylä. There are now an art house cinema, a children’s music orchestra, a small professional theatre, and a major city festival where carving and gymnastics lessons once took place. The wide range of events on offer and the restaurant activities create an ideal setting for year-round action both indoors and outside.

The City of Jyväskylä provides support for separate associations that operate in the house. The Villa Rana case has contributed to interaction in many ways. The political decision-makers have activated themselves and paid ever-increasing attention to the importance of culture.

Culture as a source of wellbeing and income

The reform of Finnish social and health services will take place in the beginning of the year 2023. Service production will move to the freshly-created wellbeing services counties. With this reform, preventive wellbeing and culture as part of wellbeing work will take on a new kind of meaning.

The actors of the Villa Rana Cultural Centre have understood culture also as a source of earning and set out to develop various contents related to cultural wellbeing in their activities. All of them are professionals, and their work has indeed provided support for city residents’ wellbeing and comfort already before the Cultural Centre and the aforementioned reform. The Centre has, however, raised the bar on the quality and content of what they do as well as on the impact of cooperation to a new level altogether.

www.villarana.fi/en/ www.jyvaskyla.fi/en